Sarah Sanders Punches Back at House Judiciary With Statement Not Rooted in Reality

On Monday, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, made a request for documents from 81 people associated with the Trump administration. The request was very broad, and tells us one of two things. For Trump opponents, it means that after two years of Republican control, the House of Representatives is finally engaging in some oversight by looking into the wide spectrum of corruption in the president’s orbit. If you are a Trump supporter, it means Democrats are engaging in a fishing expedition for dirt it can use to impeach Trump and end his presidency.

What those supporters do not have is a solid case that there is nothing illegal or unethical to find. Reams of reporting on Trump and his circle of grifters has shown a pattern of self-dealing and rule-ignoring that makes the Grant administration look like a church congregation.

Faced with this dilemma, and being the mouthpiece for a man who likes to wildly lash out whenever he feels cornered, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement late Monday night. The missive made only the barest effort at defending the president before pivoting to incendiary and baseless charges against Democrats that fall apart on first reading:

Chairman Nadler opened up a disgraceful and abusive investigation into tired, false allegations already investigated by the Special Counsel and committees in both Chambers of Congress.

The Special Counsel has indicted or gotten guilty pleas from 37 people for crimes related to the Russia investigation, so it is very weird to call the allegations “tired” and “false.” As for the congressional investigations, the partisan split between members of the investigating committees means their credibility can be called into question as easily as Sanders is doing so for this new one:

Democrats are harassing the President to distract from their radical agenda of making America a socialist country, killing babies after they’re born, and pushing a ‘green new deal’ that would destroy jobs and bankrupt America.

We are going to be hearing the socialism line a lot over the next year and a half, so it is worth pointing out that the more leftist, progressive policies the Democratic Party are angling for are not socialism. The American economy would not be transformed into a centrally-planned dystopia overrun by lazy people. America will still be a capitalist country even with programs such as universal healthcare. It will simply have a much stronger safety net.

The “killing babies” part is simply a lie, and dangerously inflammatory, for reasons I’ve written about before. No one is writing bills that codify infanticide. Pushing this garbage is a sign that you have left Earth far behind, and are currently speeding out past Neptune.

The line about the Green New Deal is particularly ironic considering that this is the next sentence:

The American people deserve a Congress that works with the President to address serious issues like immigration, healthcare, and infrastructure.

A huge part of the Green New Deal is a massive, generation-spanning investment in repairing and building infrastructure. Which would also provide thousands and thousands of jobs. The Trump administration has been promising a massive infrastructure plan for two years and has yet to deliver. Yet here it is sneering at an enormous investment in just that area.

Even for us jaded political observers with zero expectations, this statement is a ridiculous low point. It has been sent from an alternate universe, one where Fox News is the only legal TV station. Unfortunately, so long as Trump is in the White House, we are all stuck living with one foot in this universe.